‘Oh, Lady Jocelyn!’ cried Evan.  ’Would to God you might ever have said that of me!  Madam, I love you.  I shall never see you again.  I shall never meet one to treat me so generously.  I leave you, blackened in character—­you cannot think of me without contempt.  I can never hope that this will change.  But, for your kindness let me thank you.’

And as speech is poor where emotion is extreme—­and he knew his own to be especially so—­he took her hand with petitioning eyes, and dropping on one knee, reverentially kissed it.

Lady Jocelyn was human enough to like to be appreciated.  She was a veteran Pagan, and may have had the instinct that a peculiar virtue in this young one was the spring of his conduct.  She stood up and said:  ‘Don’t forget that you have a friend here.’

The poor youth had to turn his head from her.

’You wish that I should tell Rose what you have told me at once, Mr. Harrington?’

‘Yes, my lady; I beg that you will do so.’

‘Well!’

And the queer look Lady Jocelyn had been wearing dimpled into absolute wonder.  A stranger to Love’s cunning, she marvelled why he should desire to witness the scorn Rose would feel for him.

‘If she’s not asleep, then, she shall hear it now,’ said her ladyship.  ‘You understand that it will be mentioned to no other person.’

’Except to Mr. Laxley, madam, to whom I shall offer the satisfaction he may require.  But I will undertake that.’

‘Just as you think proper on that matter,’ remarked her philosophical ladyship, who held that man was a fighting animal, and must not have his nature repressed.

She lighted him part of the way, and then turned off to Rose’s chamber.

Would Rose believe it of him?  Love combated his dismal foreboding.  Strangely, too, now that he had plunged into his pitch-bath, the guilt seemed to cling to him, and instead of hoping serenely, or fearing steadily, his spirit fell in a kind of abject supplication to Rose, and blindly trusted that she would still love even if she believed him base.  In his weakness he fell so low as to pray that she might love that crawling reptile who could creep into a house and shrink from no vileness to win her.

CHAPTER XXXV

ROSE WOUNDED

The light of morning was yet cold along the passages of the house when Polly Wheedle, hurrying to her young mistress, met her loosely dressed and with a troubled face.

’What ‘s the matter, Polly?  I was coming to you.’

’O, Miss Rose! and I was coming to you.  Miss Bonner’s gone back to her convulsions again.  She’s had them all night.  Her hair won’t last till thirty, if she keeps on giving way to temper, as I tell her:  and I know that from a barber.’

‘Tush, you stupid Polly!  Does she want to see me?’

’You needn’t suspect that, Miss.  But you quiet her best, and I thought I’d come to you.  But, gracious!’